Casablanca or Jerez de la Frontera?

Casablanca has a beach inside the city. The long sand at Ain Diab runs below the Corniche, but the Atlantic swell is strong, the currents can be dangerous and water quality along the city front varies, so many locals swim in beach-club pools instead. Better sand at Dar Bouazza or Bouznika means a drive.

Jerez has no beach at all, yet it comes out ahead because the Costa de la Luz is so close and so good. Valdelagrana, Cádiz's La Caleta and the long sands at La Barrosa or Sanlúcar are a short train or car ride away. They are wide, golden and gently shelving, though the Levante wind can roughen some days.

The two eat equally well in quite different ways. Casablanca is a port city, so it is best for seafood: pick your fish at the Marché Central and have it grilled, or eat at the plain places by the fishing harbour. Tagines, Friday couscous and French-style pâtisseries in Maarif and Gauthier fill out the rest, while alcohol stays discreet.

In Jerez, food is built around sherry. It is poured from the barrel in tabancos with chicharrones and cheese, and it goes into the cooking itself, in kidneys, oxtail and berza stew. Late tapas rounds around Plaza del Arenal and San Miguel make eating the main evening ritual.

These two are about level on sightseeing, and both need two or three days, but they come from different centuries. Casablanca is a twentieth-century city. The Hassan II Mosque, which non-Muslims can tour inside, is its great set piece, and the Art Deco and neo-Moorish boulevards and the planned Habous quarter are where its character lies.

Jerez is older and more layered. It has an Almohad Alcázar with Arab baths, a Baroque cathedral and Gothic-Mudéjar parish churches. It also has two sights you will find nowhere else: the cathedral-like sherry bodegas and the dressage horses of the Royal Andalusian School of Equestrian Art.

Casablanca has more going on late, though it is a dressed-up scene. Lounges, beach clubs and clubs along the Corniche at Ain Diab play house and Arabic pop into the small hours at weekends, and hotel bars and old protectorate-era bars fill the rest of the week. There is little life on the streets, and you take a taxi from one venue to the next.

Jerez is the opposite. Evenings are spent outside, moving between tapas terraces and tabancos until after midnight, but there are only a few clubs and the scene stays provincial. The exception is the Feria del Caballo in May, when the casetas run until dawn.

Jerez is far better placed for landscape. Beyond its gentle chalk-white vineyards lie the gorges and trails of the Sierra de Grazalema, the cork-oak forests of Los Alcornocales and the Doñana wetlands across the Guadalquivir. Add the birdwatching in the Bay of Cádiz salt marshes, riding in horse country and kitesurfing towards Tarifa.

Casablanca sits on a flat plain, and its outdoor life is the sea. You can run along the Corniche to the El Hank lighthouse, surf as a learner at Ain Diab or Dar Bouazza, or ride the mountain-bike trails in the Bouskoura eucalyptus forest. The Atlas mountains are too far for a day out.

From Casablanca there is one easy outing: Rabat, an hour away by train, with the Kasbah des Oudayas and the Chellah ruins. Beyond that come the Portuguese sea walls of El Jadida and the whitewashed medina of Azemmour. Marrakech and Fes are too far away and work better as onward stops.

Jerez is a far richer base. Seville is an hour away by train, and the ancient port of Cádiz is half an hour. The sherry towns of El Puerto and Sanlúcar are close by, and with a car you can reach Arcos, Vejer, Ronda and even Gibraltar. You could fill a week without repeating yourself.

Jerez is the easier choice with children. The zoo and botanical garden is a good one, the dancing-horse show usually delights, and the nearby beaches are sandy and gently sloping. The catch is the heat in town in July and August.

Casablanca has more built for children than most Moroccan cities, including the aquarium and rides in the Corniche mall, the Ain Diab amusement park and calm beach-club pools. Outside those, though, heavy traffic, broken pavements and the risky sea make it harder going, and it suits older children best.

In Jerez you hardly need transport. The Alcázar, the bodegas, the old quarters and the tapas streets are all within a short, flat walk, and the station has direct trains to Seville and Cádiz, with the airport only minutes away. Only the white towns and the sierra call for a hire car.

Casablanca is spread out, so you combine the clean modern tram with the cheap red petits taxis, which often pick up other passengers and don't always use the meter. Only the downtown core is walkable. The mosque and the Corniche are a long way off, and the big roundabouts are hard to cross on foot.

Casablanca is the better place to shop. It has Morocco's biggest modern retail, with a vast mall on the Corniche, the designer streets of Maarif and the low-pressure craft shops of the Habous quarter. For something rougher, the Derb Ghallef flea market is the place, though serious carpet hunters should look elsewhere in Morocco.

Shopping in Jerez is mainly about local specialities. You can buy sherry and brandy at the bodegas, saddlery and leather riding boots from long-standing craftsmen, and flamenco dresses and guitars near the old quarters. Calle Larga itself is mostly Spanish chains.

The two cities cost about the same, but the expense falls in different places. In Casablanca, taxis, the tram, grilled fish and café terraces cost little, while rooms do not: hotels are aimed at business travellers and good guesthouses are scarce.

Jerez is the other way round. Central mid-range hotels are reasonably priced and bodega tours are cheap. Rooms become expensive and hard to find during the Feria, the winter flamenco festival and the motorcycle race weekends, so it pays to check dates.

Jerez is one of the places where flamenco was born, and the art is still part of local life. The peñas of Santiago and San Miguel hold evenings that visitors can attend, and some tabancos have raw sessions where the singing is close up. The late-winter festival brings major dancers to the Teatro Villamarta.

Casablanca has more formal stages than most Moroccan cities, plus a long-running jazz festival and a hip-hop festival rooted in the local scene. Outside those weeks there may be little on, whereas in Jerez you can find flamenco on an ordinary night.

Casablanca has a real bathing culture. Every neighbourhood has a public hammam for a black-soap scrub, there are calmer upscale versions in Maarif, and seafront centres offer Atlantic thalassotherapy. The city around them is loud and congested, though.

Jerez offers one Arab-style bathhouse and a few hotel spas. What it has instead is pace: shaded patios, long lunches and quiet afternoons that make it easy to unwind without booking any treatment.